Daniel Swan

I was quite delighted last night to be made aware of a wonderful product during an advert break.  I had to do a double check, and still this morning I can’t quite believe it.

Ever heard of “Murine” products as in “Murine Dry and Tired Eyes“?

Maybe I’ve been living in the dark, since I don’t wear contact lenses – but this does strike me as being a particularly bad name for a product.  Fine, so I spent years at the bench, a genuine ‘lab rat’ but I can’t imagine that I am the only person who thinks that murine means:

of or relating to a murid genus (Mus) or its subfamily (Murinae) which includes the common household rats and mice; also : of, relating to, or involving these rodents and especially the house mouse

I would love to know what rationale there was for not looking up the word ‘murine’ in a dictionary before naming your product.  Is it just another attempt by the cosmetics industry to make their products sound more…. scientific?

I also smirked at this entry in their Product FAQ, filed under “What ingredients are in Murine dry&tired:”

pH adjusted for comfort with sodium hydroxide or hyrdrochloric acid.

That just sounds so good.  We won’t even go into the spelling.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 5:02 am and is filed under Humour, Science, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.